Johns Hopkins University (JHU) dropped its investigation of a harassment complaint filed against staff members of a conservative student newspaper, The Carrollton Record. After several months of correspondence with JHU administrators, FIRE gained assurance that JHU is no longer pursuing the investigation. However, limitations on the distribution rights of campus publications remain and the university has not acted against cases of newspaper theft against The Carrollton Record. Johns Hopkins remains on FIRE’s Red Alert list.

New policies created by Johns Hopkins University regarding where student publications can be distributed are raising concern among some students and advocates following an incident where newspapers were removed from residence halls last spring. The Carrollton Record, a conservative student newspaper at the university, published an article last May criticizing another student organization’s event featuring a porn star. Copies of the paper were later found missing from distribution spots. Administrators said they removed about 300 issues from residence halls because the paper was not properly approved by the residential life department, as required by university policy. Another 700 copies also […]

Johns Hopkins does paper collection by John McCormack National Review Online When the editors of the Carrollton Record, a student-run conservative newspaper at Johns Hopkins University, published a story about how tuition dollars had paid for pornography, they were hoping for a controversy that would spark an increase in readership. On May 17, the day after they distributed the issue, all of the copies in the dormitories had in fact been picked up — but not because fellow students had taken them; they had, instead, been seized by the university administration. “I never expected this,” says Jered Ede, author of […]

Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in Baltimore, Maryland, is being accused of condoning mob censorship. An academic freedom and individual rights watchdog group is decrying school officials’ part in an apparent attempt to silence a conservative newspaper. In May, the Carrolton Record published an issue critical of a group that brought a pornographic film director to the JHU campus. Afterward, hundreds of copies of the newspaper were stolen; however, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), the university administration “turned a blind eye to the theft.” According to the Record’s editor, about half of the 600 copies that […]

September is a notoriously busy time for FIRE. Looking back over the past 10 years, some of our most important cases have either started or concluded as students returned to campus. Since we just reminded our Red Alert Schools of their unenviable status, I decided to again look at a case from one of those schools. Johns Hopkins University (JHU) has the distinction of having tangled with FIRE three times over the past decade. It goes without saying that this is nothing to be proud of. In September of 2006, JHU finally dropped its harassment investigation against the conservative student newspaper, The Carrollton Record (TCR). The investigation was prompted by […]

BALTIMORE, September 21, 2006—The Johns Hopkins University (JHU) has finally dropped its investigation of a harassment complaint filed against staff members of a conservative student newspaper, The Carrollton Record (TCR). After several months of correspondence with JHU administrators, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has gained assurance that JHU is no longer pursuing the investigation, but FIRE’s other concerns—about JHU’s viewpoint discrimination, indifference towards newspaper theft, and limitations on distribution rights—remain. “We are pleased that JHU has ceased its investigation into TCR staffers,” stated FIRE President Greg Lukianoff, “although JHU should have never investigated this complaint at all. […]

BALTIMORE, June 13, 2006—Johns Hopkins University (JHU) ended this school year by engaging in shameful viewpoint discrimination and denying its students freedom of the press. First, JHU turned a blind eye to the theft of a conservative student newspaper, The Carrollton Record (TCR), then stifled its right to distribute in dorms while allowing other papers to continue distributing there. TCR staff members contacted the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) soon after these administrative abuses began. “Freedom of the press and the freedom to distribute literature are vital liberties that should not be denied to JHU students,” said FIRE […]